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One's personality is both a composition and reflection, but if I have to choose one of them, I will choose reflection as the "self" is more important to me than "me". One's composition may change, walking across the cultural landscapes and climbing the social ladder but one's self is tied to one's reflections. The fun part is that reflections are not bound to "Time-Space" barriers ( it is not time-space) and respective mental constructs, which have grown so thick over ages, that they had reduced the image of humans to Sisyphus, rolling different sizes of boulders on hills of different heights.… As the name of this Blog indicates, knols are my perspectives on topics of interests, sweet/bitter experiences or just doodling :)

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Game Changer?

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance
that we can solve them.”….. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Although, I am not fan of
fictions, particularly Science fictions but I couldn’t resist reading Isaac
Asimov’s a few works sporadically, both out of curiosity and also because it
was introduced to me by my uncle who was always an inspiration for me. In an
interview (1988), Isaac Asimov had predicted that, internet will change levels
of learning; Public education was a change from personal tutors for those who
could afford to class based lectures, in which the students were expected to
learn with an equal pace. The internet will not only allow each individual to
learn with his/her own pace and timing but more importantly, it makes learning,
a lifelong process. Asimov was not alone in speculating, how internet will
change things as these speculations are still continued. After a decade of “worldwide”
internet availability, we must be able to see some of the most evident changes
and test some of the speculations. Here, I would like to link the fate of the
three most popular, internet based movements.

If eusociality have allowed humans to conquer
the earth, it has also been a source of debates, conflicts and perpetual struggle
between individuals and society, each side trying to increase the spheres of their
influences. By introduction of internet,
this relationship disturbed as never before, as it has empowered both
governments and individuals. Iranian green movement, Arab Spring, London riots
and 99% movements came as a test of the levels of empowerments and to redefine
relationships. Although, all these movements had the same characteristics like,
absence of central leadership, no ideological basis and no clear lists of
demands but the results were very different. While Iranian green movement,
London riots and 99% movements could not survive, the Arab Spring evolved with
mixed results. The Iranian, British, American governments were proved to have
evolved with technology and were organized enough to easily deal with their
respective popular movements so nothing happened. Arab governments that had not
reorganized themselves collapsed in the face of popular uprising.

Aside from higher intelligence,
higher culture and language, what makes humans unique from the rest of social organisms
is that; all normal individuals can reproduce, make and shift alliances across
all social levels and this flexibility is one of the main reasons for
increasing sophistication of human individuals, society, culture and
intelligence as a whole. Using imaginations to use past experiences and creating
future scenarios to evaluate the consequences of their decisions is uniquely
human and main cause of human’s deep interests in others and in socializations.
This is why, Asimov could predict that by invention and spread of internet (socialization
of computers; a human technology), individuals’ will gain a control over their
learning; to learn at their own pace and timing and topic of choice.

After a decade of entering into
this new level of socialization, at least one thing has become even clearer; in
relationships of individuals with society and within groups, adaptability and
organization are still the yin and yang of triumphs. The perceptions that
internet has changed the old game of central leadership and ideologue have
proved to be wrong as still, it is the central leadership and a common ideology
that organize people.

Although, I am myself, doesn't like central leadership and ideology as they both retard people in following them but, it is a fact that, the bigger and more efficient an organization is, the easier, it controls over individuals and smaller groups and organizations. For this we even don't need to think much as Empires of the past, powers and multi-national companies of our times are all standing evidences. It may not be wrong to say that, although, human societies are unique in flexibility of social mobility but the function of society as a whole is no more different than the colonies of other eusocial organisms.